Tips offered for clinicians to for online reputation management

(HealthDay News) -- Physicians can manage their online reputation, according to a report from the American Medical Association (AMA).

Former chair of the AMA Young Physicians Section, Ravi D. Goel, M.D., created tips for managing online reputations.

Goel offers four tips for physicians: firstly, physicians should search for themselves. Typing queries such as name or full name and rating, as well as specialty and local areas, will show relevant results. Physicians should ensure the accuracy of information on their practice website, health rating websites, social media accounts, and professional organizational pages. Goel recommends getting a professional headshot, which can be used anywhere that the physician's name is featured. Finally, he recommends addressing critics in a positive way; negative reviews should not be addressed immediately, but should be responded to later by calling the patient or sending a note of apology and offering to reschedule. The way a physician appears to patients can be controlled by optimizing the first few search engine results.

"I used to never Google myself because I was afraid to see what patients thought about me," Goel said in an AMA news release. "Then I decided to take charge of my online reputation. I wanted to make sure that no matter how a patient searched for me, they were going to get basic, factual information about me."